New Year, Clean Slate

It’s the New Year, and starting off with a clean slate feels really good, doesn’t it? Let’s not take anything with us from last year, and let’s live this year to the fullest.

One of the principles that I live by may not make a lot of sense to our head:

Take no credit, take no blame. Take full responsibility.

On the surface it seems completely contradictory. How can we take responsibility without taking any credit or blame? I wanted to explain in case it helps you start the New Year with more clarity around your actions and the outcomes that we are about to start experiencing in 2018.

We want to separate out our choices and actions from the outcome. Our choices and actions are 100% in our own hands, and we need to take full responsibility for everything that we choose to do or not do. Zero blaming, zero denying, zero disassociation. We need to deeply connect with and be present with what is ALWAYS in our hands — how we choose to respond to the reality of what is going on in our outside world.

The outcome of our actions, however, is never 100% in our hands. This is equally both “positive” and “negative” — if something that’s pleasant happens, we cannot claim credit for it. We cannot allow it to inflate our ego (make us feel “good”) and elate us. If something unpleasant happens, we equally cannot allow it to “make us feel bad” — even if it is something blatant like an obvious “mistake”. Our mistakes are just as much grace as our home runs. Look at what the outcome is teaching us and continue to move forward. Everything comes full circle — every “win” carries an equal amount of pain/ negativity, whether we see it or not, and every “loss” carries an equal amount of positivity, whether we can see it or not.

Learn to love our mistakes as much as our victories. Own what is always in our hands, how we respond going forward. This is power, this is liberation. It’s a game changer.